A Lesson in Air Conditioning Gets Personal

I have been talking about air-conditioning a lot lately and I guess that only makes sense since it’s still the dog days of summer. I got a little taste of my own medicine the other day when my own air conditioner went out. I realized something was wrong when air was coming out of the air vents but it was not cool. Luckily, it wasn’t too unbearable because it had been cooler lately and I had actually been sleeping with the windows open. As I was saying, the blower motor was running so the air was coming through but it was not cool. So, I figured I might as well make the best of it and use it as an opportunity to learn. The repair company I called was super responsive and explained everything to me in a lot of detail. I was able to understand enough to get what he was saying but not enough to personally know exactly what to do with the information. He was great at explaining everything to me and he brought up topics I honestly haven’t thought about in detail since my engineering school class days. I was very thrilled to confirm that I already had an energy efficient air conditioner and furnace installed which of course I knew but it was nice to have confirmation from the repair man. Did you know he even brought something up I really haven’t thought about even if I recall my school classes when he started explaining what broke and all of the electrical information? Fortunately I did not have to replace my outside unit – the compressor. He just had to replace two of the workings of the compressor capacitor (which really made me think of school days) and the band motor. While he was working, he was explaining to me about how as these parts get less efficient with age they affect the efficiency of the entire system. This was something I honestly had never given much thought to. The interesting part was, he was telling me because they were older they weren’t running as efficiently as possible. Then he explained the fact even though I have a high-efficiency air conditioning I was not getting all the benefits of it because my parts were older and wearing out. Because they were not running as efficiently when he replaced the parts that actually should boost the efficiency of the whole unit. So the whole experience was a good reminder that starting with energy efficient components is important but it is also important to stay up to date with routine maintenance as well so that the energy efficiency that you started with serves you well throughout the entire life of your unit.